Video: Bloomberg giving up on gun control?

posted at 9:21 am on January 8, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

I missed this yesterday, but I’m not sure how much of a miss this really is. Democrats have gone silent on gun control in the past to win elections, only to bide their time and go full throttle on it later. Mike Bloomberg has been a little less willing to go silent, in large part because he’s spending his own money and not running for office. According to Mark Halperin and Andrea Mitchell, leading Democrats have finally gotten Bloomberg to play ball on their usual strategy:

Mitchell observed that Bloomberg had previously appeared to be “single issue focused on guns at the risk of jeopardizing Senate for Democrats.” TIME Magazine reporter Mark Halperin confirmed that Bloomberg not only resisted pressure from the two highest ranking Democrats in the Senate, but also former President Bill Clinton, who asked Bloomberg to temper his enthusiasm for attacking politicians who oppose stricter gun laws if those politicians happen to be Democrats.

Halperin added that, while there are many Democrats in the Senate up for reelection this year, they all enjoy some advantages; including strong fundraising, weak Republican challengers, and incumbency itself. These incumbents, he insisted, may hang on in November in spite of six-year midterm headwinds, but attacking these Senate Democrats from the left could imperil them by reducing the base’s enthusiasm.

CNN reports that the Democratic Super PAC to which Bloomberg donated millions has already gone up with ads in support of some of this election cycle’s most embattled Senate Democrats, including Pryor, Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Mark Begich (D-AK). Each voted “no” on a resolution that would have banned high-capacity magazines in April of last year. Thus, Bloomberg has financially rooted himself on both sides of the guns issue.

Message received: the most important public policy challenge of 2013 was not all that important after all, at least when directly balanced against Democratic control of the upper chamber of Congress. Furthermore, even the most principled among us can be moved to abandon their cause so long as the pressure is intense enough.

Sure, it can get cast that way, but I’d argue the reverse of Noah Rothman’s take. Anyone expecting Bloomberg to abandon this cause is fooling himself — and that’s true of the rest of the Democratic Party, too. They are just biding their time until they get an opportunity once again to exploit emotions to push the gun-control agenda, just as they have done for the past year. If Pryor, Hagan, and Begich end up winning re-election because of Bloomberg’s (indirect) largesse, that just puts them even more in debt to the party’s bosses on gun control, and they won’t be so quick to dissent the next time it comes up.

In other words, this isn’t surrender, not even on the part of Bloomberg. It’s just a tactical retreat.

Blowback

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They are just biding their time until they get an opportunity once again to exploit emotions to push the gun-control agenda, just as they have done for the past year.

Yep, they thought they had a golden ticket when 20 tiny white children were killed in an affluent suburb in CT. Little white bodies were going to deliver gun-grabbing laws in a way that countless black victims would never accomplish.

They haven’t abandoned their goal of gutting the Second Amendment but they know that they would lose elections campaigning for it.

Gee, wouldn’t it be great if Republicans, especially TP Republicans learned to do the same thing. Win elections and waiting until the time is right to push the ball in the right direction.

MJBrutus on January 8, 2014 at 9:30 AM

TP Republicans waited for years for the surrender weasels to actually deliver on vows to repeal Obamacare. Had they continued to wait, not one thing would have been done by Boehner and McConnell who just want to win re-election and get the illegals amnesty.

I find it puzzling that any Dems continue to pursue gun control. Except for imbecilic trolls that think skeet guns are nonlethal, just about nobody believes an armed citizen isn’t safer just for being armed. And the science supports this. And Americans just simply refuse to be disarmed. And Dem lose elections when they try to disarm Americans. As things stand now no one with half a lick of sense believes any gun control nonsense for a single second. I understand the nefarious idea that leftists just want to disarm us so they can more easily rule us, but politicians are still politicians. So why do any Dems (outside of the Pelosi types) still publicly pursue this?

Perfect case in point. ObamaCare did not work because it could never work. So rather than make laugh out loud spectacles of themselves all that they needed to do was remind the public of whose idea ObamaCare is. But noooooooooooo. They couldn’t bide their time. They had to shut down the government and pass the same futile repeal bills in the one chamber they control over and over again.

Bloomberg probably needs to save his money anyway for the campaign he’ll need to wage to stop de Blasio from taking everything he did on the crime/public safety issue in New York and tossing it down the drain over the next four years.

I find it puzzling that any Dems continue to pursue gun control. Except for imbecilic trolls that think skeet guns are nonlethal, just about nobody believes an armed citizen isn’t safer just for being armed. And the science supports this. And Americans just simply refuse to be disarmed. And Dem lose elections when they try to disarm Americans. As things stand now no one with half a lick of sense believes any gun control nonsense for a single second. I understand the nefarious idea that leftists just want to disarm us so they can more easily rule us, but politicians are still politicians. So why do any Dems (outside of the Pelosi types) still publicly pursue this?

NotCoach on January 8, 2014 at 9:38 AM

For the justification for the future Supreme Court rulings.

They can never get the gun control measures passed legislatively, but as with their other big government ideas they try to get in via judicial fiat, the goal is to keep liberals in the White House and in control of the Senate long enough to get a Supreme Court that would take and rule on gun rights cases in ways that would leave the Second Amendment intact, but would disembowel its meaning, both at the local and federal level.

Gee, wouldn’t it be great if Republicans, especially TP Republicans learned to do the same thing. Win elections and waiting until the time is right to push the ball in the right direction.

MJBrutus on January 8, 2014 at 9:30 AM

It’s not as easy for us. Politicians get to Washington, and they can’t help but spend to secure their power. But, it just so happens that liberals go there with the expressed mission of spending more, so their base is a lot harder to disappoint. To wit, you rarely hear about liberals talking about DINO’s because they didn’t spend as much as they hoped, but you hear talk about RINO’s all the time for not holding the line on spending.

So rather than make laugh out loud spectacles of themselves all that they needed to do was remind the public of whose idea ObamaCare is. But noooooooooooo. They couldn’t bide their time. They had to shut down the government and pass the same futile repeal bills in the one chamber they control over and over again.

MJBrutus on January 8, 2014 at 9:39 AM

You’re a flaming idiot if you really believe the crap you’ve posted above.

Your point is well made. I would submit that your reasoning is further evidence for why the good guys need to play the game smarter. Better tactics are that much more necessary to produce election victories.

Your point is well made. I would submit that your reasoning is further evidence for why the good guys need to play the game smarter. Better tactics are that much more necessary to produce election victories.

MJBrutus on January 8, 2014 at 9:50 AM

I have one point that could help the good guys play the game smarter: stop acting like democrats.

Hey, you’re the one claiming that the TP Republicans shut down the government. I was being charitable in merely calling that the bleating of a flaming idiot. You clearly don’t know what you are talking about- simply reading DNC talking points.

The thing the gun grabbers don’t understand is that a firearm is pretty simple to make. Banning firearms will not stop death by firearms. It will not stop mass murder. The only thing it will do is increase crime but they have the answer for that also. Just increase government and police authority and take away freedom. Of course that will not work but they don’t really understand that because they are liberals and liberals are mentally ill.

The thing the gun grabbers don’t understand is that a firearm is pretty simple to make. Banning firearms will not stop death by firearms.
Dr. Frank Enstine on January 8, 2014 at 10:04 AM

I’ve posted this before – a very applicable line from the Rush song Manhattan Project:
“big shots try to hold it back, fools try to wish it away“.
The song refers to nukes, but I think it covers pretty much any technology fairly well that the utopian libtards think they can just eliminate – wish it away. It’s just not going to happen.

See, here’s the thing: with a complicit media, dems are allowed to go silent on a topic. However, if you’re a conservative who has taken social conservative stances in the past, and are mainly focusing on economic concerns, the press doesn’t care about anything but nailing you to previous expressed social positions or recanting them.

And then petulant ficon teenagers join in on the ranting, because they can’t resist looking cool and withit to libs.